So. Right.

During my pregnancy, unsurprisingly, I got emotional and sensitive. And aggressive, let's not forget the testosterone I was exposed to that made me aggressive and furry (oh God, I was so furry, it was so gross). What I'm saying is, right from day one of me being knocked up, I was really sensitive and it didn't take much to hurt my feelings--the only person, surprisingly, who didn't get the full force of my tears and hurt feelings was Dave and that's because he's so freaking nice that being mad at him is like kicking a puppy.

I found myself getting hurt feelings a LOT and whether or not they were qualified wasn't really the point--I would spend time ruminating over people who hadn't spoken to me once I said I was pregnant who I thought were good friends of mine, or friends who I felt at the time were totally uninterested in me whenever we spoke, or any other various reasons. Now I want to add that this is all totally in my head, and in retrospect I was probably just being retardedly sensitive. But I didn't want any conflict and I didn't want to spend time feeling hurt through my whole pregnancy. So I stopped talking to the people who made me feel hurt without explaining why to them or giving them a chance to tell me "stop being retarded, preggo mcfeebs." So super-passive-aggressively I deleted a lot of people from my Facebook, either because they had hurt my feelings in some stupid way or because I honestly thought they didn't give a damn about me and they wouldn't miss me on FB. To be honest, most of the people I deleted haven't seemed to notice, so those were probably justified, but there are a few people who did notice, and I feel like a shithead about it. So, to the people I stopped speaking to, I'm really, really sorry, and I am a shithead, and you don't have to start talking to me because I certainly wouldn't forgive me, but dammit, I suck, and pregnancy sucks, and I'm sorry I was irrational and lame.

I'm working on the story of the weeks after Oskar was born, when I had to check myself into the psychiatric hospital at UCSF for two days and then had to do a partial hospitalisation programme because I lost my damn mind, but frankly it still sucks and hurts to think about it so it's slow going, but one day I will finish it because frankly I don't want to forget how painful and awful it was--because it makes me so grateful that when I look Oskar now all I feel is "goddammit this kid is awesome!!!"

So I had this baby, right, and he's pretty adorable and we dig him a lot and he's getting pretty smiley and that's kind of awesome. He's less awesome when I'm awake between 2 AM and 6 AM but he's still cool.

They wanted to induce me on Sep. 23rd because they thought I had high blood pressure. Now, I knew that I didn't and that the machines at the women's clinic were just not very good at getting readings from my big fat arms, but at that point I was 39 and a half weeks and pregnancy had not been fun for about a month and I said "yes, please, take this baby." So we called my mom and said "hey mom, they're gonna induce me tomorrow night! come out here!" and we booked her a ticket for the next day. I was feeling pretty positive because I was already a centimetre dilated and like 50% effaced so I was ready to get the show on the road.

So I go into the hospital on the 23rd, which is a Wednesday night, and my midwife said they like to induce labor to mimic how it would naturally go, so slow and steady. So they stick this whatsit in me called Cervadil which is supposed to ripen your cervix and slowly get things going. It has to be in there for 12 hours. So we hung out, my mom went back to our house, and I tried to sleep that night (sleep was really, really, really fucking hard for the last month of my pregnancy because my pelvis kept dislocating itself but I digress). The next morning they check me and it hasn't really done anything--I had dilated to 1.5cm, blergh--so they go for the next thing, which is misoprostol, which is also supposed to ripen the cervix and cause contractions. It's a pill they actually have to stick into you and snuggle it in next to your cervix. So they do that and! I start getting contractions--this is like Thursday afternoon--so we walk around the maternity ward. And walk. And walk. And walk. The contractions are coming like every 2 minutes which is great, but every time I sit down or stop walking the contractions stop. So they give me another dose like 4 hours later, same shit. By this point it's Thursday night and it's been over 24 hours since we came in so my midwife checks me--I'm at 2cm. So she stretches me out to 3 cm and they decide to start the dreaded PITOCIN (terrifying because I'd heard that it can give you a really hard and fast labour). So they stick me on this Pitocin Thursday night and come Friday morning I'm still there and I'm not having any contractions. So the midwife comes in and says, well, we can keep doing this, or you can go home. I was so tired and upset and discouraged that I burst into tears--I really thought I'd be coming home with a baby. I had no idea you could have a failed induction--if I had known that I wouldn't have okayed it. So I talk to my mom and Dave about it and we decide to go home. Cue TWO WEEKS of me doing everything I can to try to induce labour, including castor oil and waddling all over creation and sexing Dave into oblivion. And of course I kept having to go into the labor and delivery ward for non stress tests to make sure the baby was okay so I met every single nurse and every single midwife that worked there and eventually it was like Cheers, where I would come through the double doors and everyone would go "Wendy! you're still pregnant!" no shit sherlocks. And my mom is here, away from home, and I'm bonding with her but also feeling totally terrible that she came out to see her first grandkid and all she was getting was my waddly ass bitching and moaning 24 hours a day.

Also here is a fun fact about how people react to pregnant women: when you're like 5 or 6 months it's cute to other people, and they want to talk to you and ask how you are doing and what you're having. When you're about 7 months people go "whoa there, you look big! you must be ready to go any day now!" And when you actually ARE ready to go any day people look at you in HORROR. I went out to a restaurant a few days after that first induction with my mom and Dave and people stared at me like I was a fucking circus freak. Now at the time I thought it was funny but I have since seen pictures of me a day or two before I had the baby and I really was fucking gigantic. I probably would have been horrified to see me out in public too.

( moving on... )

My plan for this weekend is to write Oskar's birth story and the subsequent FAIL of my brain to process it and I had to check myself into a psychiatric institute and blah blah blah. Also, I want to go to Costco for diapers.

Yes, I am 39 weeks and 2 days, I am still here and I'm still pregnant, and I have HAD IT WITH THIS DAMN PREGNANCY. FOR. REAL.

Less than a week ago I told my mom, "You know, it's getting better--my pelvis doesn't hurt as bad and I feel like I could probably keep going for a little while, so I'll probably be late."

Well, hah. On Saturday, my pelvis pain came back with a vengeance, like it heard I was talking shit and it decided to show a bitch what's up. IT IS FUCKING UNBEARABLE. It hurts so bad I can't even cry. I'm just surprised. I can barely walk with the combination of the baby's head being low and my pelvis being wrenched apart. I can't sleep: I can't sleep on my stomach, I can't sleep on my back because it puts all the weight of my belly on my spine, and I can't sleep on my sides anymore because it makes my pelvis grind and crunch together. So I've had to start sleeping sitting up--last night I had about 6 pillows propped up behind me and I slept sitting up. Do you know how uncomfortable that is? Because you will eventually involuntarily try to move to a more comfortable position, and then as I've mentioned with the grinding and the crunching and the unbearable pain. I'm exhausted and irritable and my stomach is a mess and my back hurts and I just want to crawl into a hospital and beg the nearest medical professional to get this damn thing out of me.

It's incredible, what the human body is capable of: when you get pregnant, and you *want* to be pregnant, you feel ecstatic. And then over time you are still ecstatic but you start to get scared about labor--how can I do this? How can I push a baby out of me? I don't think I can handle the pain! And then, this is the genius part: your body knows you are scared so what it does is it makes you so uncomfortable over time that eventually you stop being scared and start looking forward to labor, because LABOR ENDS AND THIS PREGNANCY MAY NOT.

Yeah, I'm still nervous about labor, because it's this unknown quantity of pain: you know it will hurt, it's just a matter of how much. I'm going to try to do it as natural as possible but I'm not going to beat myself up if it turns out I'm a pussy and want an epidural 3 seconds after contractions start. But as I say at this point I prefer it, because labor will end in a relatively short period of time, when you consider that I could theoretically be pregnant for another 2 or 3 weeks. Yes, I would gladly push a head out of my vag. Gladly.

And then the Steelers lost to the Bears! Dang!

So, in short: Grr.

Hey dudes. I'm still here and I'm still pregnant. I'm 38 weeks and 2 days, which means I have 12 days to my due date. I'm at that great point in the pregnancy where my mom calls me what feels like every 5 minutes (as if I wouldn't call her as soon as anything happens!) and any time I'm away from facebook for a couple of hours I start getting private messages asking if I've gone into labour even though I have said already that I will let everyone know what's going on. Early in the pregnancy I pruned all the people I realised I wasn't very interested in for one reason or another from my FB and now all the people that are left are people I like and who I care about and it's important to me to let them in on everything that's happening. But anyhow.

I had a second baby shower on Saturday, thrown by some peeps from my knitting group. To be honest, I was stunned that they wanted to even throw me one, but once we got there I couldn't believe the effort that had been put into it. I was totally overwhelmed by how wonderful it was. It was just a nice little get-together with cake and hummus and onion and feta tarts and the main course was a "Preggo Pizza" from a pizza place in Walnut Creek that is supposed to kickstart labor (obviously it did not but I was glad to try). Dave and I felt very loved and it is so nice to know that we have made good friends here in San Francisco. It's nice to have a support network.

Also, in case you are interested, I've actually been feeling better--my pelvis seems to be feeling not quite so bad, and my midwife cleared me taking Tylenol for it when it gets bad, so some nights I take it right before bed and it makes it easy to fall asleep. I just feel big. None of my maternity shirts cover the bump anymore--if I want to be covered in public I either have to wear the maternity pants with the giant panel that comes up under my boobs, or giant black t-shirts, of which i have a few. I used to have belly bands, like spandex-y, stretchy tubes that helped early on in the pregnancy when I couldn't quite button my pants, and they helped for a while once shirts got short so that my belly wouldn't hang out, but now my belly is too big to fit into them. So it hangs out a lot and I hate it. I like to sit Indian-style and I hate the feeling of my bare belly resting on my legs. Urgh. As a fat girl my belly hanging out is my worst nightmare and all the insisting that Dave does that it's fine and it's cute or whatever is falling on deaf ears.

In any case here are some news items that I thought were interesting today:

• Neocon nonfiction: the newest genre of literary fiction?


• We Need to Talk about Death: This article is based on the premise that the end-of-life care Medicare provides needs to be scaled back massively if younger Americans want a chance at public health care, but no one will dare mention it.


• Jay Leno's new show is surrounded by drama: I am so fascinated by what NBC is doing. I, personally, think the idea of 4 (FOUR!) hours of talk shows is suicidal but I'm watchin to see how it turns out. Also, I think Jay Leno sucks so my opinion may be biased. (And that has nothing to do with loving Letterman; I just never thought Jay was funny. He wants everyone to like him too much to be funny.)


• "The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby.": Yeah, as a liberal, we really don't need you as an ally.


• If this doesn't sound like a barrel full of awesomeness, well, you are dead inside.

Just as I was writing this someone on facebook asked me if I'd had the baby yet. Is it shitty to assume this person isn't paying attention and that our "friendship" isn't going to suffer if I let 'em loose?

Oh, and also, I love these:

i'm 37 weeks and 3 days, which is super, duper pregnant, not quite as super pregnant as, say, 38 weeks or god forbid 39 or 40 but still really fucking pregnant. i feel like a house. I AM TOO PREGNANT TO HAVE SEX AND IT SUCKS. i have the baby's room ready, i've bought all the adorable little clothes, the bathroom has been baby-fied, etc, and frankly when i think about the pain i go through rolling over in bed and how far beyond that a (hopefully) natural labor will be, well, it kind of makes me want to puke. so here are other things i've been thinking about.

• tragedy porn, news sensationalism, and the whole garrido thing: Okay, what I want to say isn't related to the case at hand--what could actually be said except for a pithy "That sucks"--but the idea that newspapers are considering charging for news. It's astonishing to me that newspapers seem totally oblivious to the fact that the way they do business will soon be obsolete. It will happen faster in some places than others, depending on the 'tech-savviness' of the area (I don't know anyone who actually reads the Chronicle here in SF) and how entrenched newspapers are in that particular culture (it will take a long time for London newspapers to disappear just because there is still a market to maintain so many, at the moment). To me, the newspapers' problem is 2 major things: first, that they already started giving it away for free. As consumers, I think it's fairly obvious that once you let people believe "This is how it works" that is, forever, how it works, until there is an improvement and obviously to the average person having to pay for newspaper information on the internet isn't an improvement. (As an aside, I would point out that TV is also having this problem with Video on Demand: they didn't consider ahead of time that people would fast-forward through commercials, and now they're pissed that no one is watching the commercials anymore. But since consumers are already used to the model of being able to fast-forward, any attempts to limit that capability would be met with outrage and it's never going to happen. So networks and advertisers have had to come up with new ways to get people to watch commercials--an example.) The point is that once something is already free, to get people to pay for it you're going to have to come up with a SIGNIFICANT improvement to talk people into it. Apple had to set up an entirely new service and a new mp3 player with new capabilities to get people to use iTunes instead of downloading. Well, some people anyway.
  
  The second problem with newspapers is that they are completely ignoring the fact that with the internet anybody can report the news. Is it going to be as good as newspaper reporting? Maybe not. But the advent of blogging and twittering means that as news happens, everyone knows about it (how long did it take you to hear that Michael Jackson died? Barring being on vacation or your phone being dead, I bet you knew within the hour). With the barebones of what constitutes news available to anyone at any time, it means that anyone sitting in front of their pc with the desire to look into a story can expound upon that topic and have other people read it. And with newspapers being a "dying medium", what's to stop intrepid journalism students from starting, shit, I dunno, their own news collective only available through the internet, rather than trying to sniff out jobs in a shrinking market? Besides, even apart from the innovations in news reporting that the internet has allowed, the fact is that newspapers aren't the only bloody news source in the world. That's the most mindboggling bit to me--every TV channel has their own news website, there's google news, there's the BBC--and as long as those sources aren't charging, people are going to use them. All newspapers will accomplish by trying to charge for their information is increasing the audience for other news sources and hastening their own demise. Boo.



• A great article about Letterman, even if the opening paragraph needs some tough love: I have this soft spot in my heart that will always be reserved for Letterman. My mom and dad were watching Letterman in the hospital while my mom was in labor with me, and my whole life, Letterman has been there. To me, it's a signal that everything is okay, still: if you can turn on the TV at 11.30, and Dave is still there, then everything is okay that day. No apocalypse. I really started appreciating Dave when he first moved to CBS--I remember watching him as a little one on NBC, but it wasn't until he moved to CBS that I started getting the humor. I know a lot of people accused him of getting complacent, but it seems to me that in the past few years he's been re-invigorated, and while he may not be doing the bits I used to love, he still cracks me up. Yay Dave.
  
  ( here are two of my all-time favorite letterman bits. )



• I'm very conflicted about Jennifer's Body. I've been watching horror movies since my eyes could focus, and my dad always taught me that it's important to support good horror movies by going to the theater to see them, rather than waiting to rent them or whatever. I've stuck with that ever since, and when I'm really interested in a movie I always make an effort to see it in a theater since that is where my money really counts. The thing about Jennifer's Body: it's written by a woman and directed by a woman! That is AWESOME! When I think of good horror movies directed by women the only one that even pops into my head is "Near Dark" which Kathryn Bigelow directed (which, as an aside, reminds me that I need to see The Hurt Locker this week). So it's important to me to support this movie because women are so drastically underrepresented in filmmaking, and especially in horror films. But! It's written by Diablo Cody! And Juno was the worst thing in the world and it bothers me that Diablo Cody is easily the most recognisable female screenwriter working today because I think her writing sucks and I'm sorry I wish I didn't but I do. And paying to see this movie, as the flip side of the coin, is an implicit approval of Diablo Cody and I do not like that at. all.
  
  This is usually the point where I get a bit self-flagellating and tell myself that if I hate her screenwriting I should just start trying to do it myself but then I get bored and end up knitting baby hats.



• Does anyone else giggle uncontrollably when they see a picture of Jon Gosselin? He looks so over-the-top and stereotypically douchey that I almost feel affectionate about it. Like, "Awww, Jon.... Come on.... you know better."
  
  
  
  As a side note, you know you have an amazing picture collection on your PC when you go to save a jpg as "snorlax.jpg" and you realise you already HAVE a jpg called snorlax and it's a totally different picture.



• I'm going to wrap this up for now until I can gather more thoughts somewhat coherently, but I'm going to leave you with this gif, which I love so much that I regularly do it at home at Dave. We were watching "2010" (the kind of sequel to "2001") one night on Netflix, since I went through a big Arthur C. Clarke period when I first got pregnant and read all of those books and the Rama books and his short stories and anyway. The point is, and I guess this is a spoiler alert if you hadn't gotten around to watching this particular not-very-good quarter-of-a-century-old movie, the beings that left the monoliths and turned Dave Bowman into Space Fetus™ sort of... eat Jupiter or implode it or whatever and turn it into a second sun. In the movie this is treated as "hurrah! A second sun! How interesting!" when in reality we can't even not call our President a Nazi and everyone on the entire planet would be making this exact face and screaming OH GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE THEY BLEW UP JUPITER OH FUCK WE'RE DOOMED AHHHHHHHHHHH FUCK!!!!!!!!!
  
  
  
  And with that, for now, I leave you.
  
  
• Okay, ETA: not to get too political, but YES EXACTLY THIS. Obama got voted in on a platform for change and so far he's done nothing but let himself be waylaid by a small but incredibly vocal minority that's preventing him from getting anything done. I'm not a fan of Bush but at least I respect the fact that when he was in charge and the Repubs had the majority they didn't let bitching get in the way of anything, they just did it and anyone who cares about, you know, civil liberties can eat shit. CAN DEMOCRATS BE LIKE THAT NOW PLEASE. YOU GOT VOTED IN. RUN WITH IT.

Time has become a bit of a blur--since I've hit my last trimester things have seemed to go really quickly--so I can't say definitely for certain when it started but some time ago, I reckon 6 weeks or so, the baby's head started engaging. A kiddo's head can start pushing into your bits pretty early on and they can move back up and move back down whenever they feel like it. It's not comfortable. It pushes things apart and the main symptom was that sometimes it felt like someone had kicked me as hard as possible in the vag. But it was usually temporary-ish--I could get on all fours and it would go away, or just walk a bit and the baby would move back up. But in the past two weeks it's gotten more and more painful to move my legs and it became gradually clear that even a baby's waddy head couldn't be responsible for that amount of pain.

It turns out that your body produces stuff to make your joints more flexible in preparation for birth. It had the unintended effects of loosening up my knitting gauge and making me terrible at Rock Band (my fingers feel clumsy and I can't hit the buttons very fast), but it also means that my pelvis is flexing too to prepare for a baba's head shoving through it. Unfortunately it's flexing too far and it means that any movement that involves uneven weight on my pelvis HURTS LIKE A BITCH OH MY GOD WHY.

These are things that you take for granted but unfortunately have been known to make me cry in the last two weeks:

--sitting up without pushing myself up on my hands
--getting up from sitting on the floor
--going up or down stairs
--getting into the car the normal way--i have to turn my back to the driver's seat, fall in, and then pull my legs in behind me
--turning over in bed

that's right. TURNING OVER IN BED. i'm a stomach sleeper by nature so it's already hard enough to sleep without doing that, but i'm not allowed to sleep on my back either. so i have to sleep on my side, but my legs will fall asleep, so i turn over a lot. except now, swinging my legs over to the other side hurts so bad it will wake me up all the way.

i'm sorry for whinging, i'm tired of hearing it myself and i'm sure dave is too. but goddammit. it was FUN up until two weeks ago! now the baby sits so low and i waddle and i'm in a lot of pain and i'm so constipated and i feel so big. i can't wait to hold this child in my arms! it belongs there, not inside me, wiggling and trying to make room that just isn't there.

A quick story: there is an Amish furniture mill not far from where my mom and her partner camp on the weekends, and for a flat, low rate they let you come in and take a truckload of leftover wood pieces which campers love to have for their campfires. They roped me into helping them once, and I was a teenager-ish at the time--I reckon maybe 17 or 18. And I'm not the most beautiful girl world and I'm in shorts and a T-shirt and as we're loading the truck up I notice a small crowd has formed of unmarried Amish dudes (you know, because they don't have beards yet) and they are staring at me. Dudes don't check me out so I got paranoid, like maybe a titty was hanging out or something, so I kept adjusting all of my bits. When we finally drove off they all waved goodbye to me. I was mystified.

"Mom, I think all those Amish guys were staring at me."

"Well, no wonder, Wendy, you've got the body of a child-bearer!"

Forget for a moment the way you could take that statement as a major insult (I didn't) but instead the idea that I look like I was made to make babies: wide hips, big boobies, built solid. I could make your babies, feed em, churn the butter and milk the cows before 5 AM.

( Read more... )

wendeline says:
yay EW on thursday!
boo it's the vampire issue

dave says:
ugh
aren't they all?

about once or twice a week i compose lengthy blog entries about shit that i hate and i end up deleting them because i'm afraid they'll offend somebody but i just realised im 8 months pregnant and i dont give a fuck. it would be entirely too lengthy to describe them all in detail but this is shit that bugs me:

--Twilight
--how did transformers 2 make all that money. HOW. WHO IS GOING TO SEE THAT SHIT. im all for escapist entertainment but HOW HOW HOW WHO WHY
--Obama birthers--can we call this shit out for what it is--straight up fucking RACIST. when has any other president been required to show a fucking birth certificate?? so let's keep harping on it, because he's brown AND HE MIGHT NOT BE ONE OF US WAHHH.
--people who shit on smokers like they're the scum of the fucking earth but yet manage to find sympathy for alcoholics or people who deal with other addictions. "i understand that addiction is a disease but smoking is smelly so it's okay to treat smokers like assholes who are out to kill everyone around them!" (these are also the same people who piss and moan about flavoured cigarettes being marketed towards kids--"these kids are being targeted and it's shameful! but once they are smokers it's ok to treat them like shit because they made a decision and now they are poisoning me!!")
--anyone who thinks it is fucking okay to make a comment about my goddammed body because i'm pregnant. if you wouldn't walk up to a fat person and say "dang you're fat" why is it suddenly okay to tell me OMG YOU'RE HUGE! as if the bigness of my belly is some sort of special treat and all pregnant women are competing to have the biggest belly. i have a big belly and i'm not fucking overjoyed about it. IT'S HEAVY AND THE FLESH AT MY SIDES IS TEARING APART SO PLEASE FUCK OFF.
--people with kids who answer any sort of statement you make about parenting with "oh that will change once the baby comes." listen, i understand flexibility is a key factor in parenting and i'm prepared for that but there are things that dave and i know just ARE or AREN'T going to happen, and you can be as smug as you want about it but all you're doing is being a douchebag and convincing me that doing anything that you do as a parent is a bad idea.
--people who have their children as their profile pictures. you are not your kid. i know you love your kid and if you want to post pictures of them that's good for you and i support that, but somewhere like facebook, your picture really needs to be you. i think this one bothers me because i'm really concerned with keeping a sense of self once the baby's here--yes, i'm a mom, but that isn't all there is to me--and this is a visual representation of my worst fear: i'm not a person anymore--my kids are all i am.
--the idea that state-run health care is all about "a bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor." WTF DO YOU THINK PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE IS. do you think for even a fucking second that anybody at a private health insurance company is out to get you the best possible medical care? OF COURSE NOT DUDE and you can't even be mad about it because INSURANCE IS A BUSINESS. JESUS H. CHRIST. i've lived with health insurance and i've lived with state-run health care and let me tell you buddy, you are never going to be denied treatment because YOU WERE ALREADY SICK under state-run. AND WE'RE NOT EVEN TALKING ABOUT EVERYONE HAVING TO BE UNDER STATE-RUN HEALTH CARE. the scaremongers in the us government make it sound like they're going to ban private insurance and make state health care mandatory and they're not, for fuck's sake, we're basically talking about extending medicare and AARGH FACEPALM WENDYSMASH ARRHGHSGOJRSGKRGJHKSLHGJL

i've been so goddamned tense and nervous and anxious all week long with dave's mom here. she's finally gone and i just wanted to get some of this shit out. i promise i will be calm and mellow and serene from here on out. really.

oh god i just realised im due in less than 2 months. i have to build this crib. i have to get furniture. i have to get everything put away. i have to figure out how to fit the carseat in the car. i've got to get stuff for breastfeeding. OH GOD MY DUE DATE IS LESS THAN TWO MONTHS AND WHAT IF IT COMES EARLY AND IM SO UNPREPARED AND AARGHHHHHHH

listen, dudes. pregnancy blah blah blah. i know it has to sound like i complain a lot but i want to say that so far pregnancy has actually been a complete dream and i feel like the luckiest bitch in the world because of it. i had morning sickness for a month, but i didn't need to be hospitalised or anything, and i got over it. ever since the morning sickness finished i've been fine. i get really mild heartburn maybe once a week or so. i have to pee once a night if i have a drink right before bed which i like do. my back hurts if im on my feet for longer than an hour, but its not incapacitating, more just "hmm i'd like to sit down for 5 minutes if that's ok." i sleep like the dead--i have to wake up fully to lift my stomach up and over if i want to roll over on my side, but i go straight back to sleep. sometimes the baby kicks in uncomfortable places--one night it was tapdancing on my cervix (which feels like getting a hard pap smear--you know that achy crampy feeling you get?) so i threw my legs up over the back of our recliner and it moved--and it will very occasionally nudge my bladder and yesterday it kicked my ribs and boy did that hurt--but more often than not Flump is just rolling and punching and kicking in the middle of my tummy. in the last week my sex drive came back--it disappeared more or less from the time i got morning sickness at 8 weeks until i hit my third trimester--and im, urgh i dont want to gross you out but im like a 13 year old boy. i cannot stop thinking about dave and leaping on him when he gets home.

i think that's been the most wonderful part of this pregnancy full stop--i feel like i'm falling more in love with him every day. he's been 100% there with me for every prenatal appointment, all the shopping decisions, all the parenting discussions. we've never disagreed on anything have to do with this baby (to be honest we don't really ever disagree fullstop) and we're both so damn excited. every day he wakes me up right before he leaves for work at 8.30, he kisses me and tells me he loves me, he kisses my tum and says good morning to the baby, then kisses me again. he makes me feel so beautiful, even when i'm waddling about and feeling like i'm carrying a watermelon in my stomach.

i just don't want to make it sound like i'm miserable all the time, because i'm really not. i'll be 28 weeks in two days (holy crap) and i feel like a goddess. i love this baby, i love my husband, i love san francisco, i love everything.

now off to knit baby things (for other people, not mine!)

while lying on my side last night in bed dave and i discovered that when the baby kicks towards my side you can see it. you can fucking see a foot bulging out of my side. i'll be honest, i do not find this cute. i find it fucking horrifying. i feel like an incubator for an alien.

THE BABY IS HICCUPING. it is fucking adorable and im so sorry dt isn't here to touch it.

dang i gotta write something, about being in pittsburgh or mj dying or whatever, but im so distracted by these hiccups. i can picture this little 2 pound baby inside me going "HIC!....HIC!....HIC!...."

im sorry for the moan but i've been hearing for ages how much pregnancy in the summer sucks. its been making me nervous since i leave for pittsburgh tomorrow and i know it's going to be hotter there than it ever gets here--i live 6 blocks from the fucking ocean which is great but means it never goes above, like, 70 here. usually. ive been bawling my eyes out all day just thinking about the world and its various injustices and how angry i am at everything and anything and i haven't been able to figure out why. then i realised i'm sweating like my body's gonna attempt to push the baby out through my pores and the thermostat in the house says it's 75 in here.

I AM FREAKING OUT WITH RAGE BECAUSE IM HOT AND ITS ONLY 75 DEGREES. im going to be unbearable to be around the whole time im in pgh. :(((((((((((((

i had such a good time at the camera obscura show the other night that i've been looking for other gigs to go to while im still preggo and people will bend over backwards to be nice to me. i know this sounds manipulative, but i'd like to point out that i top out at 5'1" which means that standing shows have always been a nightmare for me. so being able to sit somewhere and being able to see the stage is a joyful experience. i'd like to take advantage of this because Jarvis Cocker *swoon* is playing the fillmore on july 28th which is the last night dave's mom will be there--forget the fact that no one asked me if i wanted to be visited in my 3rd trimester by dave's family (i don't really want to be visited by anyone except for people whom i know are low maintenance and im sorry but in-laws by definition are not fucking low-maintenance) anyway. so jarvis is playing at the fillmore and i know that shows there are awesome and they will be nice to me because i will be like 7 or 8 months pregnant at that point AND I WILL HAVE TO MISS IT BECAUSE I HAVE NO FRIENDS IN SAN FRANCISCO and im heartbroken.

that being said while looking at upcoming gigs in sf i see there is a band called "if your hands were metal that would mean something" which is a lengthy and pretentious name that gets a reprieve only because it's a joke from MST3K: The Movie and it gives me hope for the band i've always wanted to start, "I'm Bill Shtinkwater".

IM HAVING HIS BABY. GODDAMMIT THAT IS AWESOME.

I was naturally suspicious of the Jonas Brothers. Then they made me lol on SNL and I warmed up a bit and now, I'm not going to buy their music, but me and the JoBros are cool.

JOE JONAS IS TRYING SO HARD:

in honor of the macgruber movie which i'm not sure about but i'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, my favourite macgruber:

yeargh. can i just say im really fucking annoyed with this celebrity trend of talking about how you're bisexual BUT ERM I DONT DATE GIRLS I JUST FUCK EM. (yeah you lady gaga and megan fox and whatnot)

ok.

i believe there are loads of bisexual women out there who haven't carried out a relationship because they haven't met the right one, but to say ahead of time that you don't date girls, and you only fuck them, DOESN'T MEAN YOU ARE BISEXUAL. IT MEANS YOU ARE SLUTTY. if you're bisexual surely it means you find both genders attractive and it means that you are capable of carrying out a meaningful relationship with either gender? to proclaim loudly that you'd never, omg, DATE a girl means you're not even considering love, it's just fucking, and you're just slutty.

not that i'm slut shaming because i'm slutty. i'm just saying let's call it what it is.

plus having dated girls it's annoying because wtf, I HAD TO DEAL WITH CRAZY CHICKS AND YOU SHOULD TOO.